What is Yorcard Travel Money? - A Guide for Public Transport Operators

What is Yorcard Travel Money and what are the benefits of using it?

Yorcard Travel Money is a convenient way for passengers to pay for travel. The passenger pre-loads Travel Money on his smart card in exchange for his "real" money (cash or credit card). Once he has put money on the card, he can only use it to buy tickets on a bus. The benefits to you of accepting Yorcard Travel Money are:

Pre-payment for future travel improves your cash-flow

It reduces revenue leakage

It's quicker to sell a ticket to a Travel Money user than to accept cash, so boarding can be speeded up

It's cheaper and less complicated than accepting credit cards

It will improve your network planning with more information on travel patterns

It appeals to passengers

It's easy to administer

What's in it for my passengers?

Yorcard Travel Money is more secure than cash

It's convenient and Free of charge to the passenger

Your passengers will be able to top up their smartcards with Yorcard Travel Money at home over the internet using USB smartcard readers, wherever they are using an NFC smartphone, in Payzone outlets or in travel shops. If your passenger registers his card, he will be able to see a record of his recent travel and the balance on the smartcard can be transferred to a new card if he loses the original. Your passengers are still able to travel anonymously, if they prefer.

What do I have to do to accept Yorcard Travel Money?

If you are already a Yorcard Liberica or Robusta customer all you have to do is configure your ticket machine to:

accept Yorcard Travel Money as well as cash for the payment of fares

load Travel Money on the passenger's smart card in exchange for cash

If you are not a Liberica customer but accept Yorcard Travel Money through a Multi-operator Ticketing Organisation (MTO) there is not much more work to do.

Yorcard will send you an ITSO message to be able to read, write and validate Yorcard Travel Money

After Yorcard has informed you the messages have been sent you will need to configure your ticket machines appropriately and update the ISAMs in your ticket machines with the ITSO messages

If you are not a customer or MTO member contact Yorcard and we will advise you on the best way forward.

In addition to accepting Yorcard Travel Money in exchange for travel you will need to accept cash to top up Yorcard Travel Money on a passenger's smartcard. If a customer gives you £10 you will add £10 of Yorcard Travel Money to the passenger's smartcard.

How do I get my money?

Once a week, Yorcard will send you a statement which shows you the amount of money you have taken for Yorcard Travel Money, and the value of the tickets you have "sold" using Yorcard Travel Money. It will also show you the fees that you owe (see below). The statement will also clearly show you the amount you are due from the Yorcard Travel Money "pot" or the amount you owe to the "pot". The money will be paid to you (or will be due from you) 7 days after the date of the statement.

Yorcard will put in place measures which will ensure that new entrants into the Yorcard Travel Money scheme don't have their cash position impacted by time required to settle accounts.

How much is it going to cost me?

There are two basic fees, the payment charge percentage (pcp) and the transaction charge.

For each Travel Money transaction you will be charged 0.045% (pcp). The pcp covers commission charged by retailers such as Payzone and will be revised annually

If you have Yorcard ISAMs you receive 75,000 free transactions per ISAM per annum (aggregated over the total number of ISAMs you have) after which you will be charged 0.4p per transaction. If you don't have Yorcard ISAMs you will be charged 0.4p per transaction from the outset